Programme support plays an important role in the vocational education and training system. It can drive forward innovations, help the system to resolve societal challenges, and highlight areas where further action is needed. This issue of BWP attempts to shed light on these various facets on the basis of selected examples. One aspect in this regard comprises the questions of how programmes come about, who they are instigated by and who the providers are. A second focus centres on the issues of how the success of programmes can be made measurable and how effective transfer to academic research, policy and practice can take place. Although the main emphasis is on Federal Government programmes, interfaces to federal state programmes will also be taken into account.
In order to improve points of access and opportunities for participation for as many young adults as possible, it is incumbent on all stakeholders involved in training to develop and implement initiatives and concepts. The emphasis needs to be on avoiding special pathways and on supporting routes into the mainstream system. The aim is that young people and young adults should not form the sole focus of education and training provision and support programmes. General conditions and possible ways of designing training are also gaining greater attention, and this is something which concerns all training stakeholders. This article uses a database from the Office for Transitions to Training and Work (“überaus”) to investigate the extent to which this perspective is already being reflected in Federal Government and federal state funding programmes.
A pilot project launched by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BMBW) in 1980 adopted a socio-pedagogically oriented approach to vocational education and training. Alignment to competencies rather than to deficits, social learning, integrative language support and target group-appropriate methodology and didactics are all specific hallmarks of this training concept that have remained relevant down to the present day for integrating young people into training. The article traces the development of this approach and illustrates how these core elements have become successfully established within the context of education and social policy (reform) endeavours.
Using the example of the BMBF programme “Supporting vocational orientation in inter-company vocational training centres and comparable VET centres” (BOP), this article explores the question of what a funding programme can contribute to the development of a central action area for vocational education and training, and the importance of a supporting evaluation in this context.
The key data of the programme and evaluation are outlined in the introduction, and the article concludes with the presentation of the most significant outcomes of the evaluation and the consequences of these for the shaping of vocational orientation.
Programme funding by the Federal Government carries great weight in vocational education and training policy and research. Such funding aims to support decisions and bring about structural changes. Focal points and the scope of funding allocated to programmes are both stipulated at federal level. This position paper begins by describing control autonomy in public programme funding before going on to investigate the associated policy strategies. The focus in this regard is on the two aspects of programme support as a legitimation of political action and programme support as symbolic politics.
Inter-company vocational training centres support companies in the delivery of company-based training by offering supplementary programmes and by facilitating advanced and continuing training. The BMBF has been making funding available for the facilities and infrastructure modernisation of these institutions since 1973. The inter-company vocational training centres continued to develop because of this support and the high degree of flexibility of their requirements-oriented training provision. The article presents the changeability of this learning venue. It begins by describing the general training remit of the centres before going on to trace developments on the basis of specific support programmes and to discuss future prospects.
34 projects are being supported within the scope of the BMBF main funding focus “Innovative approaches to future-oriented continuing vocational training” (InnovatWB) in order to explore contemporary concepts in this area. However, what is the contribution that can be made in this regard by a programme or main funding focus? How can innovative approaches be detected and described within the scope of a support programme, and how can they be rendered usable for training practice, research and policy? The article explores these questions on the basis of evaluation research on InnovatWB conducted at BIBB and sets the relevant issues out in specific terms by using the example of dialogue-oriented development of performance and provision, one of the central results to emerge from the main funding focus.
Inclusion and self-directed participation are two leitmotifs which have been used to instigate an overall societal structural shift in Germany over recent years, and this change is also having particular impacts on provision of services in occupational rehabilitation. Within this context, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) is using the PAUA project to support the further development of vocational training centres for disabled persons. This article presents the experiences and perspectives which have emerged.
The JOBSTARTER plus programme is a testing ground for new cooperation arrangements between vocational education and training stakeholders in the regions. The present article takes the main funding focus of “Support for small and medium-sized enterprises in acquiring higher education drop-outs as trainees” as an example in investigating which findings the external evaluation has delivered and which conclusions may be drawn from these for the further development of the programme.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and BIBB are using a “Digital media in everyday training” road show to make selected digital learning and teaching concepts from the BMBF support programme accessible to a broad specialist audience. Training managers are being given the opportunity to attend thematically-specific workshops at which they can find out about the deployment of innovative tools and applications and try these out for themselves. This article presents the campaign and reports on initial experiences.
This article sheds light on the company perspective of second chance training for semi-skilled and unskilled employees. The central issue is which hurdles companies perceive as standing in the way of expansion of second chance training activities. On the basis of 42 qualitative interviews conducted with company stakeholders, three types of firms which have certain reasons for not providing second chance training can be differentiated. Familiarisation with these categories is an important prerequisite in order to use guidance as a vehicle for acquiring more companies to offer second chance training to their staff.
There is a general consensus regarding the stressful nature of the teaching profession, and teacher resilience is an area of growing interest in scientific and political agendas. Based on a Swiss study of vocational-school teachers, this paper presents the multitude of contextual and individual factors that contribute to teacher resilience. The findings emphasise the need to approach teacher resilience in a multi-level and systemic way, particularly by investing in providing teachers with adequate skills to face complex and heterogeneous teaching tasks as well as by nurturing teachers’ sense of vocation and facilitating a collaborative and supportive school environment.
Within the new Vietnamese Law on Vocational Education and Training (VET), coming into effect on 1st July 2015, many important issues have been institutionalized that change the VET system. After a brief overview on the major reforms, this article will focus under the aspect of work-based learning on the cooperation between VET institutes and enterprises in Vietnam.
Occupations
Wolfgang Vogel; Christina Mersch; Christopher Meier
The large number of final examinations held every year create considerable organisational challenges for the chambers of commerce and industry and their examiners. In order to overcome these, automated procedures are also used for the marking of examination tasks which require defined responses. In their article “Error in the system – consequences of automated examination marking”, which was published in BWP 2/2018, Kaiser/Keup-Gottschalck/Labusch indicate that they believe there are shortcomings in this area. In this light, we take a look at the quality assurance process of the chambers of commerce and industry and at the benefits that are associated with machine examination marking.
The Federal Republic of Germany has been experiencing a rise in the proportion of persons completing the upper secondary school leaving certificate for several decades. This development is associated with a higher propensity on the part of school leavers to seek to enter higher education and with a decline in dual vocational education and training. The introduction of three-year bachelor programmes of study has given rise to the question of whether companies prefer skilled workers with an academic degree over those with a vocational qualification for the performance of tasks at the intermediate professional and management level. The article investigates this issue in the sectors of commerce, logistics, banking and tourism and presents relevant results from a BIBB research project.